Ed. Note: This is a guest post from a close friend of Peekskill Rocks, Dee Volz. The review was written over the summer but was then lost in transmission. We are extremely happy to finally be posting it and hope you enjoy it too.

Who would believe (unless I told you) what an exciting interpretation of “Othello,” in modern dress and appropriate readings of the timeless lines, is presented by the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, a rough half hour drive from Peekskill, at Boscobel on a magnificent estate with a view of the Hudson and surrounding hills? (Near Cold Spring.) Someone with an original insight and fine staging sense has set it in the great white tent that sits on the lawn at Boscobel, cut open on the side to that view. From the moment you hear distant music and see the approach of a group of soldiers in the current style of fatigues, with many women among them, (contemporary touch) to dramatic drum music, you know you are in for a drama all the more exciting because the participants are young and beautiful, and the style contemporary. Recently, as those soldiers approached to the warlike music, I experienced the thrill that only drama can give. “The play’s the thing!” I thought. Perhaps the fabulous stagecraft and mystique is due to the new artistic director, Davis McCallum. I was curious about whose touch did so much magic.Continue reading A thoroughly modern Othello→

And for those of you who don’t know, Peekskill does, in fact, have a yellow brick road! For realz! Controversy surrounds whether it had anything to do with the Wizard of Oz, but the author, Frank Baum, did attend Peekskill Military Academy before writing the Oz stories.

The extreme cold weather has had an impact on New York’s Indian Point nuclear power plant. Indicators for a refueling water tank were not working early Thursday, causing a temporary, partial shutdown.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan says operators at Indian Point Unit 3 discovered that the two sets of low-low water level indicators, or alarms, for the plant’s refueling water storage tank were not functioning. He says the cause of the lines freezing was a failed strip heater.

“The good news is the company was able to identify this quickly, get one of those lines unfrozen, and restore the alarm capabilities,” says Sheehan.

He says the Buchanan-based plant has within seven days to restore the other alarm or else the unit would have to be shut down. Sheehan points out the issue is a matter of safety, as water would be pumped from the storage tank into the reactor coolant system if there were an accident.

Start’s this Saturday from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm, at the Peekskill Field Library (wonder if there’s a late fee?)

A press release from the effort states:

<<The City of Peekskill announced that beginning January 10, 2015, the Peekskill Farmers’ Market, sponsored by the Peekskill Business Improvement District (BID), will have an expanded winter season. “The summer and winter farmers’ markets are important Peekskill family events,” said Jason Angell, Executive Director of the BID. He added, “The market introduces a wider audience to all that downtown Peekskill has to offer.”>>